


Liminality

by Jiangyin



Category: Glitch (TV), Hanson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Australia, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 01:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4460894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jiangyin/pseuds/Jiangyin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lindsey's wish was simple - a bit of company to make settling in to her new home a little easier. It probably wouldn't have been such a big deal if company hadn't just woken up six feet under.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liminality

### Prologue

When I was a little girl, my grandmother had a jar of paper stars in her kitchen.

It was an old Mason jar with a red lid that she kept on a high shelf, far out of reach of my brothers and I, filled to the brim with paper stars in every colour imaginable. When I first saw it I thought that somehow she had managed to capture a rainbow. She hadn't, of course, but she let me believe it until I was a little older.

Before I went to school so that I could learn how to use magic, just before I turned thirteen, my grandmother sat me down and taught me how to make paper stars. “Whenever you feel sad or lonely,” she said as she cut a strip of paper and started to fold it, “or even when something wonderful happens, you make a star out of some paper and drop it in here.” She finished the star and dropped it into an empty jar, one with a blue lid. “When you’ve got a thousand stars, make a wish and it’ll be granted.”

“Is that what your jar is for?” I asked. I took the star out of the jar and examined it – it was bright blue with silver sparkles – before dropping it back in. It bounced against the bottom of the jar a couple of times before coming to rest.

“It was,” Grandma replied as she started on another star. “My mother taught this to me before I left for school, and I taught it to your mother.” She nudged the scissors. “Give it a try.”

“What was your wish for?” I asked as I folded my first star, trying my best to exactly copy the way that Grandma’s hands moved.

“Ah, now that would be telling,” Grandma said, her tone secretive. “But I will tell you this – my wish came true.”

If my grandmother’s wish on a jar of paper stars came true, I reasoned as I packed my own jar away in my school trunk for the trip to Norfolk Island, once I finished my own jar of stars so would mine.

I folded many, many stars in celebration during my six years at Norfolk Island Academy of Magic – to celebrate my Sorting, the first time I managed to levitate a feather during Charms, my first Outstanding essay, my excellent exam results in Year 10 and Year 12, and in celebration of my graduation. I folded just as many for the times I felt homesick, when all of the teasing for being an orphan got too much to bear, when my date for the Year 10 Formal went off with another boy, and even when I fell off my broom during a Quidditch match and broke my wrist.

I didn’t stop making paper stars after school. All through my Healer training in the city, I folded star after star after star – one-handed on my bad days with paper strips I kept hidden in a pocket of my Trainee Healer tunic, to celebrate passing my exams at the end of each year of my training, and to cheer me up when I just wanted to go home.

When I finished my Healer training, I had one star left.

I saved that final star for the night before I started work at the hospital in the sleepy country village that was to be my new home. Sitting in candlelight on my old school trunk in my new lounge room, surrounded by boxes of my belongings, I carefully cut a strip of paper from an empty page of my journal, folded one final star and dropped it into the jar.

_One thousand stars_ , I swore I heard my grandmother say. _Make a wish, Lindsey._


End file.
